5 Personal development plan

In the final activity, you will look at opportunities for taking your career further. In undertaking the reflective activities in this section, you made a start towards developing your own personal development plan (PDP). PDP promotes the idea that learning and development are lifelong activities and is a structured approach to building reflection into your practice and career planning.

Activity 4

Timing: Allow about 30 minutes

Watch this video clip, What’s it all about? [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] , which outlines the five stages that make up an effective personal development plan:

  • Identify
  • Plan
  • Action
  • Record
  • Review.

Now that you know what we mean by a personal development plan, use the five stages to draw up your own PDP. A good starting point would be to use the reflection from Activities 2 and 3 as a basis for thinking about future planning and action.

Comment

You may have already thought about your own learning and career development, but drawing up a personal development plan gives structure to this process and provides something to refer back to and build on over time.

4 Identifying skills

Summary